Bountygate left commissioner with little choice

It didn’t take long for Roger Goodell to realize that the Saints’ Bountygate punishments had to make the Patriots’ Spygate penalties look like an hour of clapping erasers after school. The commissioner hammered the lead perpetrators, handing down a season-long suspension for head coach Sean Payton and an indefinite ban for former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams.

Bill Belichick didn’t miss a game when the league learned in 2007 that the Patriots coach had authorized illicit videotaping of opponents’ defensive signals. He simply had to pay a $500,000 fine while his club forfeited a first-round draft pick. If Goodell had suspended Belichick, he would have had no choice but to ban Payton and Williams for life and completely gut the next two drafts for the Saints, instead of docking them a pair of second-rounders.

Spygate, after all, didn’t come loaded with phrases such as “knockout hits” and “kill shots.” The electronic shenanigans in New England threatened the league’s integrity, but not its very existence.

The widespread belief that Payton would miss only four to six games discounted the repercussions on other fronts, especially in the courtroom. The revelations about the Saints’ bounties came as former players lined up to join lawsuits against the NFL, accusing its leadership of obscuring evidence tying the violence of the sport to brain damage. If Goodell had allowed Payton to coach this year, he might as well have told team owners to start writing huge settlement checks.

The Saints will also lose their general manager’s services for a half-season, and assistant coach Joe Vitt for six games. One has to wonder whether Goodell even considered stripping the Saints of their two-year-old Super Bowl trophy, which they won during the bounty years.

That idea, like all attempts to rewrite history, always appeared to be a non-starter. When players by the dozens responded to the original bounty revelations by citing variations on the scheme elsewhere, or shrugging off the assassin’s mentality as part of the game, it became clear that Bountygate had to focus on the involvement of high-level officials and their cover-up attempts.

When the first reports came out about the bounties, Goodell may have thought the story would fade quickly. The information was released like a trial balloon, set loose on a Friday afternoon, the classic crisis strategy for a corporate or political newsmaker.

The story, it turned out, had the legs of Emmitt Smith. It called for an equally strong response. The punishments came down 19 days after the original announcement, and a little less than 24 hours after Peyton Manning embraced Denver and John Elway. That drama, with all its glorious distractions, had to end before the commissioner could seize a whole news cycle to smack down Payton, Williams and the Saints.

Drew Brees almost immediately turned to his Twitter account to proclaim support for his suspended head coach. “I am speechless. Sean Payton is a great man, coach, and mentor,” the quarterback’s tweet said. “The best there is. I need to hear an explanation for this punishment.”

The NFL had already clearly delineated Payton’s failure of leadership and duplicity during the investigation. If he has any doubts about what happened, he should rent a DVD of “All the President’s Men” and maybe invite Brees over for a showing.

Williams’ departure for St. Louis, at the end of the Saints’ season and six weeks before Bountygate surfaced, added to the pressure to come down hard on Payton. Otherwise, the Rams might have paid more heavily for New Orleans’ sins than the Saints did.

The team just let Williams walk, only three years after Payton had transferred $250,000 of his own paycheck to land the aggressive defensive coordinator. Did the Saints know that they were all about to be busted, and think that splitting up would make sorting out punishments more complicated?

Granted, it wasn’t unusual for Williams to wear out his welcome with a head coach. He apparently alienated Joe Gibbs in Washington by not informing him of a plan to send only 10 men out for the opening play of a game, in honor of slain cornerback Sean Taylor.

But at the time, the move made sense for one, vital reason. Williams’ methods had started to fail. The Saints’ defense faltered badly all year, drafting in the wake of a magnificent offense. The 49ers, rendered helpless by the Saints’ excess aggression in their preseason opener, took full advantage of New Orleans’ predictability and tendency to over-pursue the quarterback when they met in January. As a result, they delivered a knockout blow in the playoffs. No extra payment required.